Product development is assisted by computer based applications, including word processing and graphics tools, scheduling tools, and product data management tools, among others. The typical product development cycle begins with an idea for a product or an improvement to a product that addresses a need in the industry or provides a solution to a problem. From the product idea, alternative designs may be explored, and ultimately, a design is chosen, designed, and implemented. During the initial phases of the product development cycle, word processing, graphics, and scheduling tools are often used to capture information such as marketing analyses, projected development schedules, and descriptions and reasonings behind particular design choices. During the design phase, information related to the design, such as the design specifications and 3-D model data, are typically captured using a CAD tool. During production of the product, part tracking information is typically captured using a Product Data Management (PDM) tool. As an example, suppose a designer has an idea for a new product. Along with the idea, the designer is aware of several requirements that the product must fulfill and has a couple of solution ideas. The designer must use several different tools to create representations of various parts of the solution. For example, the designer uses Microsoft Excel to create a cost analysis, Corel for graphic illustration, SolidDesigner for an initial space budget, and CoCreate's WorkManager to create an initial functional organization.
While it is clear that various computer-based tools assist in capturing information and tracking the progress of a product, the current state of the art remains problematic. First, no tool currently exists for specifically capturing and tracking the ideas and decisions about those ideas during the initial phases of the product development. Exploration of ideas is often a situation where much trial and error, and resulting correction, is seen. In order to successfully track such exploration, it is necessary to capture many only partially completed information structures, the decisions to continue or abandon a path of exploration, and the rationale behind these decisions. It is also useful to capture the intent of a particular solution alternative. In the prior art, no single tool exists for capturing and tracking such important information including the intentions and objects of a design, questions, ideas, and answers posed during the exploration of the design, and the same information with respect to alternative designs that are explored. Furthermore, even if some of the information is captured using one or more different tools, because the information is not integrated or easily accessible except using the particular tool that captured the information, much of the initial design intents and design decision rationales, as well as the design alternatives that were explored, is typically not effectively captured, or is lost as the development cycle of the product progresses.
In addition, in the current state of the art, all design-related information that is captured using a particular computer-based tool, is typically stored, owned, and retrieved only via the tool used to create the data. There are many reasons why it would be advantageous to have the ability to access the data created by one tool using different tools. In particular, the information captured using one tool may be useful to various people from various entities performing various roles. For example, certain information captured during the design of a product may be useful not only to the design engineers, but to the manufacturing and testing engineers, managers of the product generation process, service technicians, marketing and sales personnel, order processing personnel, web site designers and administrators, customers, and suppliers, to name a few.
Accordingly, a need exists for a way to capture, store, and retrieve innovation information including product ideas, alternative designs, questions and answers explored during the innovation process, design decisions, etc. A need also exists for capturing the innovation information in a tool neutral form that allows any tool to access (and modify where appropriate) the innovation information. Such a tool would allow one to track the gradual development of the design and decisions about the design over the evolution of the product, thereby capturing and allowing tracking of the functional “as-designed” aspects of a product rather than at most the “as-built” configurations of the end product that the prior tools tend to capture.